~Define An Alcoholic~

Dabs

~Unpredictable~
May 13, 2011
8,144
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~Tennessee~
In your eyes only, your opinion, what do you consider an alcoholic??
Someone who drinks every day??
Someone who drinks more than twice a week?? Someone who when they first wake up, they grab a beer??
Or is an alcoholic someone who maybe only drinks a couple of times per week, but they get so wasted, they pass out, forget where they are, miss work and end up sick for 2 days??
Just what is an alcoholic??
 
I suppose a person who allows alcohol to adversely affect an otherwise normal life.
I drank a fifth yesterday but I also laid about 300 block and I'm up and ready for my guys to come in and get the cows milked.
Stucco day today. Probably kill another fifth in the process.
 
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when you let it interfere with your life....

you can be a functioning drunk......drink most of the night and get up and go into work....

or you can totally surrender to the bottle....and become a total drunk....or dry drunk.....when you have drank so much that it no longer matters to your brain

i went thru a heavy drinking period.....i was drinking a couple of 5's of vodka a day
i am one of these people who doesnt drink much but when i do....i drink to a total excess...

last time....a friend and i .....drank two fifths of patron....yea just him and me...it was not pretty....but now i will go a few years without drinking.....

drunks will die early and the booze will catch up with you.....i have watched people drink for decades then suddenly they seem to melt....their features just change and they age overnight....plus no one looks that good in yellow
 
I'm a strange character in that respect. I drink when I'm on a mission......building or designing something........after the project is complete ? I lose all interest.
 
Yes if alcohol interferes with your relationships, your work, or your health it's called alcoholism. Yikes, I could go for a cold one right now...
 
An alcoholic kills everyone that loves him/her. It's death pretending to be your best friend. But it doesn't just kill you. It kills all those around you that love you.

I am alanon. I AM ALANON. I lost much. And it still hurts.
 
In your eyes only, your opinion, what do you consider an alcoholic??
Someone who drinks every day??
Someone who drinks more than twice a week?? Someone who when they first wake up, they grab a beer??
Or is an alcoholic someone who maybe only drinks a couple of times per week, but they get so wasted, they pass out, forget where they are, miss work and end up sick for 2 days??
Just what is an alcoholic??

An alcoholic is a person that drinks alot of booze.
 
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There are lots of people who drink too much, who drink themselves stupid drunk, who get in trouble while drinking, who create problems for themselves with their drinking. . . .who are NOT alcoholics. Such people can learn to drink responsibly and many do.

But MOST people for whom their drinking has become a problem for themselves and/or others are alcoholics and the only sure way to recover from the worst effects is to stop drinking altogether, forever. Alcoholism is a disease in the sense that the body changes and craves it as does the mind. They may become alcoholic with the first drink (though that is very rare) or may have been able to drink normally and not to excess for many years before unexpectedly crossing an invisible line into alcoholism. The line is different for each alcoholic.

At some point a tolerance starts building up so that they are able to drink more than a normal person without getting stupid drunk or passing out. That phase lasts awhile. And many go through that phase to a point that almost any amount of alcohol visible changes them physically and in their personality. A kind of psychosis sets in that convinces the alocholic that he is not an alcoholic. He (or she) finds any excuse to drink though--a bad job, difficult people, a nagging spouse, rebellious children, money problems, health problems, or the sun came up that morning. If he can't find an excuse he'll make one up and convince himself that it is real.

At this point the alcohlic is not drinking to become high or drunk. He is drinking to feel normal. And the psychosis makes him so manipulative of those around him that those who are trying to cope with him, fix him, cure him, find some miracle that will make it okay, develop their own psychosis that is called in the profession 'co-dependency'.

Some begin drinking first thing in the morning.
Some start mid morning.
Some after lunch.
Some at night.
Some only on weekends.
And some on erratic patterns.
It isn't what an alcoholic drinks or how much or when or where, but how the alcohol affects him/her that makes him an alcoholic.

One in ten people who drink regularly will likely become alcoholics.



It's a terrible disease with a terrible prognosis. But it can be arrested in its tracks and the alcoholic can live a normal, productive, happy life if he is willing to accept help to get off and stay off the sauce. Most cannot do that without help.
 
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I have always been virtually allergic to beverage alcohol.

I don't like anything about it. I don't like the smell, I can't stand the taste and every time I've tried it the effect has ranged from a bad headache to extreme nausea. I've considered that a fortunate circumstance ever since I learned there is an identified predisposition to alcoholism.

For those who are predisposed alcohol is the most insidiously addictive and biologically destructive drug of all. It kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year and makes many thousands more very sick.
 
I have always been virtually allergic to beverage alcohol.

I don't like anything about it. I don't like the smell, I can't stand the taste and every time I've tried it the effect has ranged from a bad headache to extreme nausea. I've considered that a fortunate circumstance ever since I learned there is an identified predisposition to alcoholism.

For those who are predisposed alcohol is the most insidiously addictive and biologically destructive drug of all. It kills hundreds of thousands of Americans every year and makes many thousands more very sick.

And there does seem to be an identifiable gene for it or at least the propensity does run in families. That 1 out of 10 people who drink will become alcoholic? The ratio is much wider for those without addictions in the family. But when it runs in a family, a disproportionate number of folks will have a problem and a disproportionate number of those who don't develop alcoholism themselves will be attracted to alcoholics because they are already conditioned to the dynamics of an alcoholic personality and it feels comfortable and normal to them. If the person is not an alcoholic it may be somebody hooked on other drugs or gambling or some such. All addictions share some common denominators but alcoholism seems to be the only one that is hereditary.
 
A quick way to diagnose someone as alcoholic is when they are physically and/or mentally dependent on alcohol as a way to make them feel normal.

Some who are physically addicted can end up going into convulsions if they quit.

Binge drinkers don't "feel right" unless they are celebrating (or mourning) something and they have a drink in their hand.

Basically, alcoholics drink because of something in their past that they feel pain over, and alcohol is the only anesthetic that they've found that works.

Which is why the 12 steps work so well, it gives you a framework to discover the truth about yourself and take appropriate actions to fix the problem (other than drinking).

I was a Drug and Alcohol Program Advisor for the U.S. Navy for over 8 years.
 

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